FG urged to encourage local researches among youth

The Vice Chancellor of University of Abuja, Prof Michael Adikwu has identified lack of interest in local research by certain classes of people as a problem the federal government need to address to encourage local talents by Nigerian youth.

Prof Adikwu said there are lots of inventions and discoveries in Nigerian by people who may not be well-lettered.

He stated this in Abuja while presenting a paper tagged, “Redefining the Education Ecosystem in the Face of the Fourth Industrial RevolutionTo Be or Not to Be?” at the 5th Edition of the Digital Africa Conference and Exhibition.

He said as the National Coordinator of a World Bank-assisted Science and Technology Education Project, he met many people with raw talents.

“A boy made a fan that had two faces and could fan in all directions at the same time. Another one made a model aeroplane that could fly very clearly and another man said he could generate electricity without following the principle of the conservation of energy,” he said.

Some of these people according to him were illiterates, others were just secondary schools leavers and some devolved into fields that were not their areas of specialisation.

He said, “To be able to harness the benefits of such inventions or discoveries, government should set a unit or department in the Ministry of Education or Ministry Science and Technology for this purpose.”